Studio 60 - 10/9 (The West Coast Delay)

Cafe Society
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Monday’s ratings are out. Studio 60 did a 5.7 rating/9 share, compared to last week’s 6.0/10. Not only that but it loses huge numbers of viewers from Heroes, which was at 8.1/12. And Heroes itself suffers a big drop from the 9.4/15 for Deal or No Deal. Terrible numbers. Hard to justify keeping an expensive show numbers.

And totally deserved numbers. Studio 60 doesn’t work very well as drama and keeps frustrating those who want it to be comedy, who appear to be a sizable fraction of the audience that’s tuning it in.

People here are right. Matt and Harriet have less than zero chemistry. They make me want to hit the remote whenever they’re on screen together. Sarah Paulson is so flat-out bad an actress that she would be perfect for Jack McCoy’s assistant on Law & Order. She can’t do comedy, she can’t do drama, she can’t deliver a line. That’s the trifecta for a series like this.

And the comic sketch was just as bad. When I first heard it, I was wondering why any of the other writers were laughing. I was positive that Ricky and Ron would deliver a huge speech about how if Bush jokes were clichéd then this bit was a thousand times worse. We’ve heard it a million times before, done much better. Dane Cook could do this bit better. And Sorkin agrees with this. He must or he wouldn’t have set up a punchline about its being a nine year old routine. So he knew that it was clichéd and desperately overdone and still had everybody in the cast say out loud how funny it was.

Death, doom, and destruction.

The show is circling the drain. Everything is wrong with it. Every thing. Sorkin can still write the occasional good line, but he doesn’t have a handle on the characters or the drama or the pacing or the comedy or the internal conflicts necessary to drive all the rest of the elements.

I’ll probably watch it go all the way down, but I am heartbrokenly disappointed.

Tiny Fey, your show better be good!

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Bright light among the otherwise bad news: the show actually picked up viewers in the 18-49 demo, gaining .4 over last week.

I’m starting to wonder if Mondays at 10 is the right place for this show, though.

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I’m not really sure network television is the right place for this show. This is Sports Night all over again, IMO; Studio 60 is definitely a bit flawed right now, and it’s not SN-good quite yet, but even given its flaws it’s absolutely more intelligent than everything on network TV except for possibly Boston Legal. Unfortunately, we’re in a network climate where Deal or No Deal is the big hit of the evening (I can make fun of Deal or No Deal, right? we can all agree that it’s a show about attractive women in slinky dresses and overly hyper contestants who can’t do math?), and at this point the intelligence of the show is perhaps the best thing it has going for it. It likely needs a refocusing and/or a cast cut similar to what we saw through the first season of the West Wing. It’s never going to be the comedy that some people seem to expect of it; it’s always going to be a drama with a bunch of funny moments that aren’t “laugh out loud funny”. Firefly, Sports Night, Veronica Mars, a dozen other examples - smart writing plus great everything else doesn’t even sell on network TV these days until the DVD comes out, and right now Studio 60 is smart writing while lacking a good part of “everything else”.

Studio 60 is Comedia Dell’arte, except it costs millions of dollars to put the sketch on the next week, so it’s going to take a lot more than just patience to get it to where it wants to be - and even then, like old Italian comedy, it’s not something that’s going to appeal to everyone. It probably would have been better if Sorkin pulled together a bunch of lesser-known actors for, well, every part other than Perry and Whitford, and just made sure that he got everything perfect like he has in the past. If nothing else it would have kept the episode costs down and probably gotten him a longer leash. As it is, well, with the 13 episode contract, I forsee a move to an even crappier night as soon as the network gives up faith; and give up faith, it will, because I’m not allowed to truly like more than two television shows at one time, and right now BL and Galactica have dibs.

P.S. Someone will quote this and take offense that I’m calling them stupid, or whatever. I’m not, really, but that’s fine - just make sure you quote this, because it’s the important sentence here:

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Is there an inverse effect as well? Because I’m betting DVD sales of Deal or Nor Deal are gonna tank.

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Well, it depends if there’s a “special feature” that removes all of the dresses.

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FAIR WARNING: If you really dig the show, and feel at all defensive about some of the criticism, skip this post.

I am a fan of Amanda Peet, and I kinda dig Sarah Paulson, so that should tell you where my head is at. I’ve seen every episode so far, and I’ll keep watching to the bitter end despite really really not liking it. Should be around Thanksgiving. IMO, it started off tolerable, and has steadily devolved into a complete trainwreck.

I finally connected the dots on Sarah Paulson costarring with Amanda Peet in the WB dreck Jack & Jill. That was her, right? Well, honestly, that show was better than this.

Everyone knows the feeling you get when watching a crappy SNL sketch that just drags on and on. That’s the feeling I get during every second we see of the show-within-the-show sketches, rehearsals, and writing sessions.

The plagiarized 90 seconds was inexcusably bad. We’re talking “why don’t they make the whole plane out of what they make the black box with” bad. That Science Schmience trainwreck was a whiny, hamfisted preach-fest. The Gilbert & Sullivan number was a self-important embarassment. And the whole news segment – even discounting the retarded “we’re really sorry, oops we’re sorry again” shtick – wasn’t even in the same universe as funny.

I would go so far as to say that there hasn’t been one iota of humor anywhere near the show-within-a-show. So on a visceral level I get that dreaded “this SNL sketch sucks balls” feeling whenever we get anywhere near the “on-air” material. And that’s a serious problem.

I don’t think it’s Sarah Paulson’s fault, nor do I think it’s the fault of any of the actors. I actually like most of them. It’s the godawful writing. The painfully bad, college freshman level self-indulgent melodramatic garbage. Yes, everybody feels their job is important, so we shouldn’t be surprised that the characters on this show should feel their jobs are supremely important.

But come on. It’s so over the top that I suspect Sorkin is intentionally parodying himself. Newsflash: You cannot shoehorn gravitas in where it doesn’t belong. And if there was ever a setting where gravitas does NOT belong, this setting is it. The people producing this sketch comedy show are a million times more serious than every cop, lawyer and DA on television.

I needed eye surgery after all the eye-rolling I did watching this episode. Sitting alone on the couch, I actually physically rolled my eyes. Multiple times. Before the first commercial break.

Gee, I wonder why the ratings aren’t good? Maybe they should try to inject as much humor into the sketch comedy show as Lenny friggin’ Briscoe injected into his investigations of brutal murders on Law & Order. Drama does not mean devoid of humor. Especially when the drama is about comedy.

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But aren’t Firefly and Veronica Mars way funnier than Studo 60? (Asked the guy who never saw either.)

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Yeah, and what’s the deal with airline food?
Sorkin could keep writing the drama but should hire an actual comedy sketch writer (or two) for all the show-within-a-show material. As for the romantic subplot, a LSD-tripping monkey with diarrhea could bang that out and I predict no drop in quality.

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I’ll co-opt Ellis Dee’s pre-emptive warning for those prone to take offense at criticism of this show, and suggest that you skip ahead.

Folks, this is NOT intelligent writing. That may be why I have such severe disappointment about this show - it insults intelligence. There are dozens of shows on that are more intelligent than this. The West Wing was intelligent writing. This is awful, awful hamfisted writing.

Mentioning or alluding to important issues does not make something intelligent, just as a beauty contestant saying that world peace is important does not mean she actually knows anything about world politics, criminology or the causes of violence. An intelligent discussion, for example, of the issues of censorship versus the legitimacy of community standards would not have been written as it was done on this show. Intelligent writing wouldn’t have everyone grimacing at the romantic tension and drama. Intelligent writing wouldn’t force all of the characters to react with hilarity to obviously, painfully bad humor. Intelligent writing just simply wouldn’t have characters doing so many things that just don’t make sense.

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Gotta agree with most of the criticism here. Wanted to like the show as much I liked the early years of West Wing, but the problem I keep running into is that Sorkin keeps insisting that I buy crucial plot elements that just aren’t beleivable. I’m perfectly willing to accept the “hey, it’s a tv show, it’s not going to be entirely realistic” argument, but Sorkin hangs the entire premise of the show on things I just can’t buy.
For instance, the plot line about Peet’s character’s DUI bust being discovered by the media. It’s so not beleivable that it brings the show to a stop for me. She’s the head of programming or something like that for the network, which in Sorkin’s world mean’s she’s a huge well known persona whose personal life will be of interest to everyone. But in the real world, who knows the head of programming (or whatever her title is) for a network? Even if she’d been in the news a bit because of the premiere episode controversy, nobody would remember her the next day. Yet we’re supposed to think that her DUI arrest from years ago would be breaking news, make her ex-boyfriend a media darling, and threaten to bring the network to its knees.
The same problem happened with the stolen comedy routine. Okay, if they realized after it was done on the air that the routine was stolen, that would be bad. It would be awkward for the show and they’d have to find a way to make amends, like having the original comedian on the show next week to beg his forgiveness. But again, Sorkin forgoes any similarity to the real world and writes it as if this is an earth-shattering crisis for the network. Millions will be lost! The network will go bankrupt! People will die! We have to do all sorts of ridiculous things now to save our show, our network, our very way of life!
If this were a sitcom, none of this criticism would apply. But the premise of this show is that it is set in a tv show that occurs win our real world, where certain rules of logic still apply. I’m willing to give some leeway just for dramatic license, and really, I’m not a nitpicker about verisimillitude in a show that’s just trying to entertain, but Sorkin is sabotaging his own work when these plot lines are sooooo far from reality.

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Want to like it - like a few bits of it, a la Sean Factotum’s cites.

Have to agree with Hentor’s original post - lots of effort seems to be going into making me not like this show.

Unfortunate - this show has a built-in audience of folks who want to like it and it hasn’t found its footing - IMHO, not close. Not sure if it will last long enough to do so…

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The comedy in the show within a show isn’t important to me. I assume we’re in an alternate universe where certain comedy bits are outrageously funny that fall flat in the real world. Just like in TWW where the Presidential cycle was 2 years off from the real world. I think it would be more amusing if the show within a show was funnier, but it really doesn’t detract from my enjoyment with the show.

Not giving up the plagerizing writer by the two lead writers detracted from my enjoyment of the show. It seems extremely unlikely. But the actual comedy bit that he stole; I don’t care that it’s not funny. I’m willing to suspend that part of my sense of humor since it doesn’t really affect the rest of the show.

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Gotta agree. It’s not intelligent writing, it’s just “clever” writing, full of self-conscious jokeyness, flirty-flirt-flirt patter, curlicue debates, and brainy references. Sure, there are some good lines, but intelligent writing doesn’t leave those lines just sitting there–it takes great pains to emphasize character, tone, and context. Studio 60 is a failure on this level. Sure, it’s got a talented cast, but only a precious few have been able to salvage what they have been given, while the rest are cast adrift. You can not blame stupid audiences or cluesless network execs or incompetent marketers for this. It’s all completely in Sorkin’s lap.

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I feel that this is true of the sketch comedy that we just see bits of.

But the premise of the show is that Ricky and Ron and their writing staff are horrible and unfunny; that Matt has been brought in to save the show; that Matt is so incredibly brilliant that he can write a 90 minute show all by himself; that he gives in to pressure and allows the staff to do a 90 second piece; that the staff actually thinks this bit is hysterically funny; that Matt agrees that the bit is funny; that the performer thinks that the bit is funny; and that the audience thinks that the bit is funny.

That bit had better be damn funny.

For the equivalent to what Sorkin did, you’d need to have a show about a losing football team; have the premise of the show be that a new coach and general manager are brought in to save the team; that the team needs a quality quarterback; that a great quarterback is traded for by one of the old management staff; and that the quarterback turns out to be Andy Dick. And instead of everyone rolling their eyes, the coach hails his greatness, and the general manager hails his greatness, and the team owner hails his greatness, and his teammates hail his greatness, and he leads the team to victory the next week.

Would you buy that scenario? Would anybody in America buy that scenario? Yet that’s what Sorkin wanted his audience to buy into.

Yes, I care that the bit wasn’t funny. I care that my eyes rolled as soon as I heard it. I care that Sorkin himself knew that the bit wasn’t any good to begin with. I care that Sorkin doesn’t want me to suspend my belief: he wants me to join him on an ego-tripping alternative plane of reality to the one in which I reside.

That’s why the bit’s not being funny matters. It marks the point at which I have to say “I no longer trust you.” That’s a point as unfunny as the bit itself.

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Great analogy.

:smiley:

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How do you explain The Longest Yard, then?

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Vanity Fair is more of a features and entertainment magazine than a journal of hard news. The YouTube bit was more “inevitable discovery” than anything else. All in all, it’s a little questionable, but not Jayson Blair questionable. Journalists haven’t been passive observers and recorders since, well, ever.

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Not laugh out loud funny, but funnier on a different level.

I like the show a lot (maybe it has to do with having worked in media half my life and all my adult life), but there is no dramatic tension. Variety shows are not hip comedy today. Scrubs, MNI Earl, Curb your… Variety comedy died the moment Seinfeld became a hit show, more than a decade ago.

If Sorkin had written about the life and problems of surviving in a changing tv landscape, about trying to hang on to what you know, when everything around you is moving at a different pace, about how this is really the last chance for Matt&Danny or they’ll end up like Gary Busey, about trying to find a way for two middle aged guys to be hip and relevant for a teenaged audience who grew up on South Park - well, then it might be compelling drama, with juxtapositions being obvious for people *not * working in media, but also trying to cope with a world rapidly changing.

I do love the two leads, their acting and chemistry, and will stick with it all of the 13 episodes that will air.

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30 Rock premeires tonight and I have some hope for that. Tina Fey not only obviously knows sketch comedy (and SNL in particular) inside and out, but is also a sharp, witty writer. I think that she’s probably got a few years worth of funny observations and insights stored up which can at least make for some laughs. I suspect we’ll learn more about what SNL is really like in one episode of 30 Rock than we’ll get from a full season of S60.

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I think 30 Rock is promising simply because (a) it’s got Alec Baldwin, who can be a riot when he wants to, and (b) I think the promos of the show have been pretty funny.

And the format (straight comedy, 30 minutes) is going to be much better-suited for the subject matter anyway. I’m going to be really surprised if it’s worse than Studio 60.